Easter 2015

Since I haven't been on my blog in ages and the last post was Easter 2014, I figured I'd just jump ahead a year.

Stephen had Friday off of school for Good Friday (love Catholic schools!). We asked him to come home for the weekend and invited Caleigh to join him.  They were free, so they flew down on Thursday and back to school Sunday evening. Unfortunately Bill & I had concert tickets booked for Kenny Chesney in Vegas for Friday evening. So we picked them up at the airport, went out to dinner and then headed to Vegas.

Concert was great, glad we went. But we missed getting to spend some time with Stephen and Caleigh.

Anyway Easter morning we had the traditional crepes.  I made some eggs, bacon & crepes with strawberries.  Breakfast was yummy and it was so nice to have our whole little family together!

Afterwards, the kids all headed out back for their Easter egg hunt. Nobody knew the eggs were filled with cash and they were still excited to go hunt for them! I love the enthusiasm! They all had a certain number of eggs to find. It took awhile but everyone found theirs. As a side note I found another egg a week later so I'm not sure where the extra one came from!

 

Later in the afternoon we headed to Chuck & Joanne's for Easter dinner.  They did a cute carrot pull instead of an egg hunt this year.  Their garden was overflowing with carrots so the kids each pulled one.  There were prizes for various categories such as: longest, shortest, ugliest, etc.  It was a fun way to get her carrots harvested!  As always it was a nice day.  We enjoyed visiting with family and getting to sit and talk with everyone.

The visit definitely didn't seem long enough but I was thankful for a chance to visit with Stephen and Caleigh.  Happy Easter 2015!

Easter 2014

I can't believe we're already at Easter!  Wasn't it just Christmas?  This was the first holiday we spent without Stephen.  It was weird, but we had a good day.  I made crepes for breakfast, which the girls were happy about.  They also wanted to have our annual egg hunt so they got to hunt for plastic eggs filled with scratcher lottery tickets.  They each won a few bucks and had fun searching.  Bill couldn't resist giving tons of clues along the way.  He's such a kid at heart.  I think next year, I'll make sure he doesn't see where any of the eggs are before the hunt and let him search along with the girls.

Then we all got ready to go over to Chuck & Joanne's.  The girls decided to get prettied up this year.  They looked beautiful!

We couldn't have asked for a better Easter Sunday!  The weather was perfect.  The volleyball court was groomed and ready to roll.  The kids had the crazy egg hunt (Nikki found two, really two?!)  They were holding out for the big eggs but didn't find any.

Later on some shuffleboard got going.  We enjoyed just sitting and relaxing and catching up with everyone.  We came home around 7:00 and got to talk to Stephen.  He said he'd had a nice brunch with some friends and had an uneventful day.  It was a perfect end to an awesome day.

New Years Eve 2013!

This year we volunteered to host.  We were having a group of 14 adults and all of their kids (plus a few extras) over for the evening.  The adults had a 7:00 dinner reservation at Union on Yale in Claremont.  We'd planned to bring in Vince's Spaghetti for the kids.  But when I arrived at 5PM to pickup our food I saw a sign on the door letting me know they were closed for New Year's Eve/Day.  Hmm this wasn't good.  Bill was working out, so I was on my own to come up with a solution by 6:00 when everyone would be arriving.  I opted for San Biagio and called in an order of pasta, bread and pizzas.  They got it all done and I got home by about 5:45, success!

This was the second year we'd gone to Union on Yale and it was great again.  The service wasn't quite as good this year, but the food was delicious.  After that the night was a blur.  We headed home, the kids opened their white elephant gifts and we played a game called Cards for Humanity.  It was pretty funny, although quite inappropriate.

It was a great night!  Although I think the recovery for Bill and I took a little long.  I think we enjoyed the evening at home a little too much.  But it was a great way to ring in the New Year!!

November happenings

Where did the month go?  It was a busy one, but great.  We knew Stephen would be coming home for a visit but didn't have exact dates.  It came down to how the water polo team performed.  With  Ali's birthday falling on Thanksgiving this year, we had to have her party the weekend before.  She wanted to go ice skating and then have everyone come back here to hang out until around 10:00.  She was planning to have the girls all sleep over that night.  I convinced her to skip the sleep over part because she was leaving the next day for camping at the beach with Paige.  We also were in high risk for rain that day which scared the heck out of me.   What was I going to do with 20 or so kids locked in my house for 8 hours?!  Thankfully the weather held out and there wasn't a drop of rain.

They were so cute.  On their own, they piled up their cell phones and left them on the table.  It was a great day!  Then they all went home, Ali slept late, then woke up and headed down to camp at Huntington Beach with her friend Paige until Wednesday.  She got home just in time to enjoy Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving day gave us another task to get done.  Stephen was leaving to go back to school in a few short days and wouldn't be home until Christmas break.  So we had to head outdoors for their annual Christmas photo.  Luckily it was a beautiful day.

We took these photos and several more in about 10 minutes.  Then I had to run inside and finish getting ready before everyone arrived for Thanksgiving dinner.  The girls asked if they could keep my camera to take a few more shots, and boy did they ever.

They had a lot of fun doing their photo shoot.  And it ended it a yummy meal shared with family.  That was just a bit of the fun from the month.

Halloween

This was an odd year for Halloween.  It was on a Thursday night and neither of the girls had Friday off from school.  Ali had invited over a bunch of kids to go out trick or treating.  She'd wanted to go out on their own but a parent had asked if we'd be with them.  Plus Leslie had Millie and Parker that wanted to go out we had to be with them anyway.  I told Ali we'd just trail behind and they could run ahead.

But first we had pumpkins to carve!  I bought three pumpkins; one for Ali, Nikki and Bill.  And Bill had big ideas of what his was going to look like.  But then Ali had two ideas and wanted to do both.  So Ali and Nikki did two designs.  One on the front of their pumpkin and one on the back.  Only I didn't get photos of the finished pumpkins somehow.  Trust me, they were awesome!

Now onto the big night.  Fourteen kids ended up being here.  It was great to see all of them dressed up, and not just the lame costumes.  They all looked great!  Ali and Paige had gone up the street to a church festival for about an hour before everyone showed up.

I think this is the 5th year this group has come up to our house for trick or treating.  It's grown each year, and always is a lot of fun.  It's sad to think this was probably our last year of joining them.

Nikki went up to her friends house and they went to a party.  She wasn't able to stay out too late because of school the next day, so it was a pretty uneventful evening.  Although the funny of the night for me was when the kids all got back to our house and were sorting their candy in the living room.  The doorbell rang and a little boy of about 3 and his bigger sister said, "trick or treat".  I said hi and gave them some candy.  They started to walk away when the little boy turned and said to me, "there's a lot of people in there".  I told him yes there were.   He started to walk away again, then turned and asked, "did they go easter egging?".  I laughed and said, "yep they just got back".  His sister finally pulled him away but he was adorable.  Makes me miss when the kids were so little and took it all in.

Oh and as a side note, apparently Stephen enjoyed Halloween as a college student.  I think their celebrations went on for several days.  But I did get a few photos sent to me.  This was my favorite:

Yes college, what's not to love.  Miss my babies!

July's Fun! 4th of July

Still catching up on our summer fun, I'll move into July.  It was a busy month too.  It started off with the 4th of July celebration at our house.  It's been a tradition to celebrate here with a BBQ and "safe and sane" fireworks show. This year we really debated staying down at the beach and enjoying a big show.  But in the end, we didn't want to add any more hotel stays to our packed summer.  So we invited some friends and family over and proceeded to have a great day!

It was great for Millie this year that The Katona's came too.  Millie and Mylie had a great time playing together all evening.  The food was great, and the company even better.